Chapter 5
G
illian and Sophia decided that a note to their uncle requesting a secret meeting with him tonight after he retired to his rooms would be the easiest arrangement. Gillian gave the note to Meacham and begged him to deliver it to her uncle before Silas went downstairs for dinner.
“And Meacham,” she said as she pressed the note into his hand, “please do not let Stanley or Lord George Canfield see you giving this to my uncle.”
Meacham studied her strained face a moment before nodding and saying, “The master is currently in his dressing room—I shall deliver it to him immediately ... and wait for any reply.”
“Oh Meacham, thank you!”
While Sophia placidly plied her needle on a piece of embroidery, Gillian paced the confines of the sitting room waiting for Meacham’s return. Fortunately for the state of the blue and cream rug beneath her feet, Meacham was not gone more than ten minutes.
At the knock on the door, Gillian leaped across the room to answer it. Seeing Meacham standing there, she dragged him inside the room and shut the door. “No one saw you?” she asked.
“No one, Madame,” he said. A look of distaste flitted across his face. “I believe the two, er, gentlemen are in their own rooms dressing for dinner.” He handed her a small, folded piece of paper. “Here is your reply.”
“Thank you.”
Meacham hesitated and Gillian looked at him. “Yes? What is it?”
He cleared his throat, his cheeks reddening. “It isn’t my place to speak out,” he mumbled, “but should you need help of
any
sort, do not hesitate to call upon me. It would be my pleasure to serve you and Mrs. Easley however I may.”
Gillian flashed him such a dazzling smile that he blinked. “Oh Meacham! Thank you. You do not know how much we appreciate your support.”
Blushing right up to the top of his bald head, Meacham bowed. “Thank
you,
Madame,” he managed and strode from the room.
Gillian opened the note and read the few lines. She hadn’t expected that Uncle Silas would deny them a meeting, but relief washed through her when she read his reply.
“Uncle has agreed to meet us after dinner—once he escapes from Stanley and Canfield,” she said to Sophia. “He suggests that after we’ve eaten, we retire upstairs as soon as politeness allows. When it’s time, Meacham will come for us and take us to his rooms.”
The hour was late when the two women, escorted by Meacham, slipped into Silas’s rooms. The evening seemed interminable, and only the wink Silas had given her when she’d entered the salon where they gathered before adjourning to the dining room enabled Gillian to act normally. It helped that Stanley was on his best behavior, determined to redeem himself in his uncle’s books—and when Stanley wished, he could be quite charming. Beyond taking an insulting scan of her body through his quizzing glass when he first spied her, Canfield behaved himself. Somehow Gillian managed to act civilly to him, but the unladylike desire to land him a facer was never far away.
Dinner behind them, not wishing to arouse suspicion, Gillian and Sophia, as was custom, left the gentlemen to their wines and removed to the salon for tea and cakes. The gentlemen joined them before long and shortly afterward, the ladies retired to their rooms.
Gillian had thought of nothing but the coming meeting with her uncle, and she couldn’t deny a growing reluctance to confess all to him as Sophia insisted. Every instinct rebelled at involving someone else in the situation, and she wished for the time and the wisdom to think of another way of dealing with Canfield. Embarrassment cascaded through her. She felt such a whining little fool running to her uncle for help, but at present, there didn’t seem to be another solution. Her lips thinned. Unless, as Sophia had suggested, she reminded herself, she wanted to become Canfield’s mistress. Her stomach roiled. No! Never that. But did she have to tell her uncle everything? Could she hold some of it back?
“Couldn’t we just tell him that we’ve decided to accept his offer of a home?” Gillian asked abruptly. “Does he have to know ... everything?”
Sophia was quiet for second. Then, her eyes meeting Gillian’s, she said, “Yes, I suppose we could keep quiet, but is that the wisest course? Whether you tell Uncle the truth or not, we’ll lose our home; Canfield will still hold the vowels and he will still be able to gossip about Charles’s bargain with Winthrop—even if he can’t force you into his bed. If Uncle knows the entire story, he may be able to prevent Canfield from besmirching your reputation more than it already is. At the least he’d be warned and braced for the scandal that could erupt.”
Gillian bit her lip. “I feel such a mewling weakling. He is an old man—he doesn’t need this kind of problem.”
“Have you considered what could happen if you don’t tell him and Canfield gossips about the vowels and the bargain your husband made with Winthrop?” asked Sophia. “I repeat—if our uncle is to welcome us into his home, he needs to know the truth. He should have the choice of accepting us into his home, knowing a terrible scandal may follow us, or of turning his back on us, now before anything happens. To act otherwise would be dishonorable and unfair.”
Sophia’s words hit home. It would be cowardly—and dishonorable, Gillian admitted, not to let Uncle Silas know of the scandal he might be facing. She had no choice. She had to tell him. And pray God, he didn’t toss them out of the house.
It seemed like hours before Meacham scratched on the door to the sitting room and a moment later whisked them down the long hall and into their uncle’s rooms. Silas was seated in the green damask chair by the fire. He’d removed the tobacco brown jacket he’d worn to dinner, but his broken arm remained swathed in the silk sling and his feet, shod in slippers, were resting on a footstool.
A tray of refreshments had been placed on the mahogany chest that sat against the far wall, and indicating the tray, Silas said to Meacham, “After you serve the ladies, you may leave us. I’ll ring you when it’s time to escort them back to their rooms. And remember, no one must know that they are here with me.” Meacham smiled. “There is no one to see—as soon as you came upstairs the gentlemen left for The Ram’s Head looking for livelier company. I do not think they will return for several hours.”
Silas nodded, pleased. “Good. Good.”
Both ladies declined refreshments and after Meacham had poured Silas a snifter of brandy, he bowed and departed.
Gillian and Sophia sat together on the cordovan leather sofa across from Silas and he regarded them with affection. He thought they made a pretty picture, Gillian glowing in a gown of amber sarcenet and Sophia serene in a garment of blue with a silk fichu several shades lighter than her gown. Noting the tense way Gillian sat on the sofa, the fingers of both of her hands clenched together, he said gently, “Now why don’t you tell me what has you in such a fret and why we are skulking around like a trio of conspirators.”
Even though she had known this moment was coming, Gillian didn’t know where to begin. She rarely spoke of the night Charles had died and then only to Sophia. Despite the passage of time, beyond the horror of her husband’s murder, she writhed with shame every time she thought of that confrontation with Lord Winthrop. A shudder traveled down her spine when she recalled the look in Winthrop’s eyes as he stared at her body and she dreaded having to speak of that night again. Charles’s bargain certainly wasn’t something she had ever wanted to discuss with her uncle and yet she knew she must... . But dear God! It was difficult. She looked helplessly at Sophia.
Sophia patted Gillian’s clenched fingers and smiled at her. “I know it is hard, but Uncle needs to know everything. Start at the beginning—the night when Charles was murdered.”
Silas stiffened. He’d known that his nieces must have something of importance to discuss with him and that the matter was urgent, else they would not be meeting tonight in this clandestine manner, but that the matter harked back to Charles Dashwood’s murder hadn’t crossed his mind.
Leaning forward, he said, “Tell me, my dear.” He sent Gillian a singularly sweet smile. “I promise that I shall not be shocked.”
Taking in a deep breath, Gillian said, “You must understand that I had no idea of the sort of party I was attending at Welbourne’s hunting lodge.”
“I never imagined that you did. Nor have I ever thought for a second that you had anything to do with Charles’s death.” Sadness crossed his wrinkled face. “I should have done more to stop you from marrying him... . I blame myself for what happened. I was aware that he was not a ... good man, and I can never forgive myself for not speaking out more strongly. Just look at what you’ve had to endure because of my silence!”
“Oh, Uncle!” cried Gillian, slipping from the sofa to kneel near his chair. “It was all my fault—I was silly and determined to marry him—you could not have stopped me.” Her fingers gripping the hand of his good arm where it lay on the arm of the chair, she said, “I am the only one who bears any blame for the foolish choice I made.”
He raised his hand and brushed back a tendril of dark hair that dangled against her cheek. “Since we disagree on that, shall we settle on sharing the blame?”
She blinked back tears and smiled shakily. “If you wish.”
“Well, now that we have that out of the way, suppose you tell me what this is all about.”
A pair of pewter candelabrum on the mantel provided the only light, and the room was quiet except for the pop and crackle of the fire as Gillian sought to find the words. It was an ugly story she had to tell, and fearing to see the affection in Silas’s gaze turn into disgust, she turned her head away. Her cheek resting against his leg, the skirts of her gown spread out like an amber cloud around her and her eyes fixed on the fire, she began to speak about that night. Lost in relating the events, she was hardly aware of Silas’s hand caressing her dark hair.
The first part was easy, but humiliation and shame seared through her again when she told of Lord Winthrop’s entrance into her bedroom and her throat closed up, her voice dying away.
After allowing her brief pause, Silas said quietly, “Go on, my child. Do not falter now.”
Her voice not much above a whisper, Gillian continued, stopping only at the part when she discovered Charles’s body lying on the floor and she suffered the blow to her head. Silas was silent for a moment after her voice died away. He’d said he wouldn’t be shocked, but he was—not by any action of Gillian’s, but that Charles had been so vile! Guilt smote him. Good God! Charles had been a despicable creature, a man who had thought so little of his wife that he had expected her to whore for him—and I let her marry him, he thought bitterly. His eyes dwelled on her dark head resting confidingly against his leg. She has much, he decided, to forgive me for.
“I suspected that Charles wouldn’t make you a good husband, but I never envisioned he would sink to such depths,” Silas said unhappily. “It is a good thing that he is no longer alive, fouling the air with his breath.” He waited a second before adding gently, “But the tale doesn’t end there, does it, my dear?”
Still not looking at him, Gillian shook her head. In many ways, now came the most difficult part. She and Sophia had discussed Silas’s reaction and tried to gauge how he would react when he learned of Canfield’s threat. As children, they’d heard tales of the duels Silas had fought when a young man and the fear that he might feel compelled to call out Canfield could not be dismissed. Gillian had never thought she’d be grateful for his broken arm, but she was—it might be the only thing that prevented him from challenging Canfield.
“Winthrop kept the vowels and a few weeks ago, he lost them to Canfield,” she said baldly. She swallowed. “Unless I become his mistress, Canfield has threatened to take our cottage to cover the vowels.”
“Ah, I see,” said Silas, a note in his voice that made Gillian turn and look at him.
“You won’t do anything foolish, will you?” she asked anxiously, not liking the expression in his eyes or the set of his mouth.
“Of course, he won’t,” said Sophia with great calm. “His arm is broken—he can hardly challenge Canfield to a duel in this condition.” She smiled serenely at Silas, who scowled at her. “And by the time your arm is healed and you
could
challenge him, this situation will be resolved.”
“And how do you figure that, my gel?” demanded Silas, not at all pleased that Sophia was right.
“Because I suspect by the time your arm is healed that Lord George Canfield will have realized that if he opens his mouth about Charles’s bargain with Winthrop, it will not reflect well on him. Unless he wishes to appear a blackguard himself, he’ll keep his tongue behind his teeth.”
“You could be right,” Silas agreed, “but I mislike letting the rascally scoundrel escape without retribution.”
“I doubt that he will,” Sophia said. “His kind almost always comes to a bad end.”
Silas didn’t disagree and if he had his way, that bad end would come sooner than later... . Staring down at Gillian, who still looked at him anxiously, he smiled. “Let him have your cottage, my dear—you know that it is my dearest wish that you and Sophy live here with me.”
“But what about the scandal, if Canfield gossips?” Gillian asked tightly. “Are you sure that you want us living here when the
ton
might be abuzz about me and what a wicked woman I am? A murderess and now a strumpet?”